Only the Animals begins with what sounds like somebody screaming, before the film fades into the opening shot of a man cycling through the streets of an African city with a goat draped over his shoulders. This playful initial misdirection – it is the goat making the noise that sounds like a human scream – sets up the audience for a film where often nothing is what it first seems. Despite opening in Africa, the action quickly shifts to a rural community in France where a woman has gone missing. Segmented into four parts to tell the story of various characters who in some way are directly or indirectly involved in the woman’s disappearance, writer/director Dominik Moll crafts an intriguing film that ultimately leans more towards allegory rather than a conventional mystery.
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CINEMA AUTOPSY 